Attorney General Eric Holder in Ferguson today

“We have seen a great deal of progress over the years. But we also see problems and these problems stem from mistrust and mutual suspicion.

I just had the opportunity to sit down with some wonderful young people and to hear them talk about the mistrust they have at a young age.

These are young people and already they are concerned about potential interactions they might have with the police.

I understand that mistrust.

I am the Attorney General of the United States, but I am also a black man. …I think about my time in Georgetown — a nice neighborhood of Washington — and I am running to a picture at about 8 o’clock at night. I am running with my cousin.

Now my cousin started mouthing off; I’m like, ‘This is not where we want to go. Keep quiet.’

I’m angry and upset.

We negotiate the whole thing and we walk to our movie.

At the time that he stopped me, I was a federal prosecutor. I wasn’t a kid. I was a federal prosecutor.

I worked at the United States Department of Justice.

So I’ve confronted this myself.

We are starting here a good dialogue. But the reality is the dialogue is not enough. We need concrete action to change things in this country. That’s what I have been trying to do. That’s what the President has been trying to do.

We have a very active Civil Rights Division. I am proud of what these men and women have done. As they write about the legacy of the Obama administration, a lot of it is going to be about what the Civil Rights Division has done.

So this interaction must occur. This dialogue is important. But it can’t simply be that we have a conversation that begins based on what happens on August 9, and ends sometime in December, and nothing happens.

As I was just telling these young people, change is possible. The same kid who got stopped on the New Jersey freeway is now the Attorney general of the United States.